I got a call that Governor Dikko Umar Radda of Katsina State would be interested in taking me, along with some others, to inspect some of the projects he has executed in the first three years of his first term in office.
I would not pass that up for anything. Any opportunity to verify what state governors are doing with their fabulously enriched allocations, following the removal of fuel subsidy and increased remittances from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, is welcome any day. I wanted to see how the increased revenue is being used to improve the lives of people in the state.
President Bola Tinubu and his media team have almost shouted themselves hoarse trying to get media practitioners to focus on how state governors are spending the increased revenue, amid allegations that some of them are channelling it into personal use or white elephant projects.
We boarded a flight from Murtala Muhammed II Airport in Lagos to Abuja. There are no direct flights between Lagos and Katsina, so we had a stopover in Abuja. The flight was delayed, and we had to spend the night in Abuja because the connecting flight to Katsina had already departed.
We were disappointed, but we had some comic relief from the taxi driver who picked us up from Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport and took us to our hotel. It turned out he did not exactly know the location of the hotel, so he took us on a circuitous journey around Abuja.
